A minute later it cracks open, and Ben stares at me, his face gaunt, his eyes flashing angrily. He looks more awake than I’ve seen him in a while.
He must not have succeeded in getting his fix without me.
“You’re back,” he grunts in surprise.
“Can I come in?” I say, hating myself for stooping to this level.
He hesitates for a moment, then grunts again, turns around and lets the door fall behind him. I quickly push through.
I gasp as my eyes take in the tiny two-room apartment, the main room entirely filled with his dirty bed, while the kitchen is cracked open to reveal moldy dishes. The stench is overwhelming. The windows don’t seem to have been opened since I left.
Has the place always been this shitty? Did I get used to the luxury of the Devil Tower?
Ben lets himself fall on his bare mattress and holds a hand out.
“I don’t have anything for you,” I mutter.
At once, he lunges up and pins me against the wall.
Now that he’s not addled with drugs, he’s surprisingly strong. It’s lucky I don’t really care anymore.
“Where’ve you been?” he spits out. “Busy getting fucked, whore?”
I stare at him calmly, refusing to be intimidated by the fist threatening me.
He brings it down on my cheek, and the force of it twists my head sideways.
“Never put out for me, whore, but you’re getting fucked by some rich guy, eh?”
Another punch, this time to my gut, and I’m on the floor, the wind knocked out of me.
“I can smell the money on you, cunt! And you never even bought me my shit!”
I lie wheezing on the floor, unable to defend myself as he takes a step back and aims his foot right at my stomach. He kicks me, again and again, as I try to protect myself with my hands, even while my brain is thanking him for doing what Damien inexplicably couldn’t. Killing me.
“I WANT MY FUCKING DRUGS!” he screams, his fists and feet landing on me, on my stomach, my face, my back, my legs.
Finally, he lets up, and I’m aware, with a pang of regret, that I’m still alive. But I’m incapable of moving. I stare up at him numbly as he kneels next to me, his hands rifling through my pockets. He finds Logan’s wad of cash.
“Knew it. Rich bitch. One thousand fucking dollars. You were holding out on me, weren’t you?”
I close my eyes in exhaustion as I hear him head into the tinykitchen. He returns with a steak knife.
“You’re fucking dead,” he hisses, and then he plunges it into my stomach.
-
Two hours later, I’m still not dead.
What the fuck.
Ben is lying on the bed in a drug-induced stupor and I’m still on the floor. The hands I’ve placed on my stomach have somehow kept me from bleeding out. Damn survival instinct.
It’s wet beneath me, and when I drag a finger on the floor, it comes up red. Clearly, I’ve managed to bleed a lot. But I guess it takes more than a steak knife to the stomach to kill Seraphina Connor.
Unfortunately.
Spurred on by boredom more than anything else, I stand up, panting hard. I head to the bathroom and find an old sewing kit at the back of the medicine cabinet. It was my mother’s, and I don’t think I’ve ever used it as an adult.
